ALI BABA, MY CAÏQUE-TCHI
Our return journey to Constantinople was uneventful. There we found our
mother, who had decided to spend the winter in the town and not on the
island. I was not supposed to be well enough yet to resume my studies
seriously. My brother left us shortly for Europe again.
It would have been a dreary and miserable winter for me, away from my
home and the country, separated from my playmates and cooped up in
small city rooms, with only buildings to look at on all sides, had it
not been for a discovery I made. By accident I stumbled upon a big
volume of Byzantine history, a history, till then, practically unknown
to me.
As page after page gave forth its treasures, my interest in the people
of which it wrote increased, and loneliness and boredom departed, not
to return again that winter. After I finished the book it came over me
that all these marvellous things I had been reading about had taken
place yonder, at Stamboul, half an hour from where I sat. Instantly
the desire took possession of me to re-read that history, chapter
by chapter, then cross over to Stamboul and find the actual places
mentioned.
This was not so easy to accomplish as one might think; for I had to
reckon with the elders, who would have a thousand and one objections to
my going over to the Turkish city. I went immediately to my mother, and
without any preamble--which I knew to be the best way, in order to take
her breath away--told her of my project, speaking of it casually as if
it were as simple as drinking a glass of water.
She gave me the puzzled look with which she often regarded my little
person. I believe that every time I came before her she wondered anew
how I happened to be her child; for she was tall and beautiful, and
very conventional in her desires, and I was small and elfish, and
my desires were usually for things she could not imagine any person
wanting. After I had finished speaking, she replied quietly:
“What you ask is out of the question; for we have no one, you know, who
can waste so much time every week accompanying you.”
“I don’t want anyone,” I replied. “I would much rather go alone.”
The puzzled expression in her eyes deepened. “Go alone--over there? But
I have never been there alone in all my life.”
“I know that, mamma, but you know perfectly well that there are a
great many things you never did, or will ever bring yourself to do,
which I have already done. Besides,” I pleaded, “my father is dead now;
my brother is away; you took me from my home and brought me to this
horrid town, and you don’t even let me go to school on account of my
weak lungs--and what is there left for me to do?”
“Well, well,” my mother compromised, “you had better let me think it
over, child.”
The result of her thinking culminated in my being accompanied to the
former capital of the great Byzantine Empire by an uninterested and
unsympathetic female elder.
It was an utter failure, this my first attempt at archæological
research. The elder, besides being unsympathetic, had a supercilious
way of talking, and prided herself on her ignorance. Before the
afternoon was at an end she became tired and cross, and then coaxed me,
saying: “Why don’t we go and see the lovely jewels and silks in the
market, and there I shall treat you to a plate of _taouk-okshu_.”
I agreed at once, not because I was willing to sell my Byzantine
interests for a plate of sweets, but because her presence spoiled my
pleasure.
That evening my mother and I had a conversation of an animated nature,
a conversation which was continued the next day and yet the next,
and grew more animated with each session, until on my side it reached
stormy heights--and my mother’s nature abhorred storms; so I obtained
the coveted permission of going alone to the city of Byzantium.
“Mind though, baby,” she cautioned, “don’t ever cross the Golden Horn
in a boat. You must always go by the bridge.”
It had not occurred to me to take the boat, but once the suggestion
was made, it took possession of my brain, and tormented it to such an
extent that on arriving at the Galata Bridge my feet turned straight
to the quay where the Turkish boatmen were squatted, contemplatively
“drinking” their _narghiles_.
“A boat!” I commanded, imitating as far as possible my mother’s manner.
The first man of the row put aside his _narghile_ and rose
quietly. Unlike all the other nationalities in Turkey, the Turks alone
never jostle each other for a fare. They have a system of their own
which they scrupulously adhere to.
The _caïque-tchi_ who approached at my summons was an old man.
He was dressed in full baggy trousers, and wore a white turban on his
head. He must have been already old when Sultan Medjid, thirty years
previously, had substituted the fez for the turban, and he had not
cared to adopt the new head-dress.
“What does the little _hanoum_ wish?”
“To cross,” I replied, with the same haughty manner as before.
He bent down, unfastened the rope with which his slender, graceful
little _caïque_ was tied, and I stepped into it and settled myself
blissfully among the cushions in the bottom.
Before he had rowed me half-way over I remembered that I had forgotten
to strike a bargain with him. “By the way,” I said casually, “what is
your fare?”
“A _kourous_ and a half” (threepence) he said promptly.
“_What!_” I cried. “If you are not ready to accept half that, you
may just as well take me back.”
He stopped rowing. “Take you back! But where would be the profit?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but that’s the answer the dead philosopher
made to Charon.”
“If he were dead, how could he make an answer?” he asked.
Thereupon I found myself in my most favourite pastime--initiating
somebody into the Greek writings; and as I explained to him Lucian’s
“Dialogues of the Dead,” the old Turk listened intently, paddling very
slowly, slightly bending toward me, his kind eyes twinkling, his face
wreathed in smiles--looking very much like a nice, big, red apple,
shrivelled by the frost and sun.
By the time I had finished the story of the philosopher, we were
approaching the other side of the Golden Horn.
“You see,” I concluded, “you get more than Charon did out of the
transaction; and besides, since I am going over there three times a
week, you may become my regular boatman, and if you are over here with
a fare at sunset you may wait for me, and take me back, too--only then
I shall pay you one _para_ less.”
It was not because I was of a miserly disposition that I was bargaining
so hard; but I had only one _medjedié_ a month, and the elders
invariably borrowed a part of it back from me, so that I was always in
straitened circumstances.
“Why are you going over there so often?” he asked kindly.
I liked his baggy bloomers, of the colour of the stained glass windows
one sees in the old cathedrals; I liked his being faithful to the
turban, and I fell in love with his kind, beaming old face. Besides,
the way he enjoyed the story of the philosopher and Charon convinced
me that he was not like most of the dreadful elders--so I told him the
reason.
His oars again became suspended in the air, and he listened with intent
interest.
“Is it in the Koran you read all those things?”
“Oh, no,” I said, “in a book bigger than the Koran.”
“How can that be?” he asked incredulously.
Then I amplified, and told him of Constantine the Great, of how he left
Rome to build a new city, hundreds and hundreds of years before the
Turks had even thought of leaving Asia and invading Europe.
His attention to my words delighted me. I had not been so happy for
ever so long; for next to reading books I loved to impart them, since
in the telling I tasted them better. They became clearer to me.
Besides, sharing things from books is a joy to which there is nothing
comparable.
“You can read all this?” he exclaimed admiringly, “you, who are no
bigger than my thumb! But then your people could always read, though
they were no kind of fighters and we beat them.”
He did not mean to be rude, I knew. It was his direct, oriental way of
stating a fact, and I did not resent it. But I did explain to him that
in the past we had been _very_ great fighters--though I kindly
abstained from telling him how we had fought them in the Revolution,
and how we beat them.
That he was genuinely interested he proved to me when we landed.
“_Benim kuchouk, hanoum_ (my little lady) I should love to be
your _caïque-tchi_, both ways, and I shall charge you only two
_paras_ for each crossing, if you will only tell me what you are
going to see every day, and whether you found it over yonder.”
I extended my microscopic hand, and he took it solemnly in his big,
horny brown one.
“You are a dear, Ali Baba,” I cried. I did not know what his name was,
but Father Ali seemed to suit him.
Byzantine history, combined with my search in old Byzantium, and Ali
Baba’s rapt attention to my expounding of it, made that winter a very
happy one. I generally returned when the city was bathed in the sunset
light; and these hours with Ali Baba, listening, his oars poised over
the waters of the Golden Horn--truly golden at this hour--were hours of
enchantment for me. How could we help becoming fast friends, sharing
as we did such magical moments together. I liked him so much that I
began to economize and make him presents I thought he needed, such as
a new shirt, a new pair of stockings, a new cloth for his turban; and
it almost broke my heart when one evening, as he was landing me on the
Constantinople side, he, too, made me a present. It was a very gaudy
red and blue handkerchief, filled with raisins and _leblebia_--a
delectable grain only to be found in Turkey.
I accepted these, apparently delighted, yet wondering what I was to
do with them. It would have been impossible to enter the house and
go to my room without having to explain the handkerchief and its
contents--and the handkerchief would mean telling about the crossings
in the boat, and I did not wish to contemplate what would follow that
disclosure.
With a great deal of heart-aching I had to dispose of the sweets. I
gave them to some urchins in the street, and my ache in a measure was
relieved by the joy they manifested.
Although this was the only winter I travelled with Ali Baba, I never
forgot him. Indeed the bond between us was too great lightly to forget;
and when I came to town I always managed to save a half hour for him.
I would go directly to the quay, and if he were not there I would wait
for him till he came back from the other side. If he were there, he
always rose quickly, unfastened his little _caïque_, and off we
were; only to stop in mid-stream, his oars poised in the air, his kind
eyes twinkling, his mouth half-opened with a smile, listening to the
things I had to say of books and of travels.